Do not be misled by the designer jacket. Or the lovely manners. Or the jewelry, which is both lovely and designed by the chic woman who is wearing it. While Reena Horowitz is clearly a lady, she is also a philanthropic Terminator. What Reena wants, Reena gets. Lucky for us that what she wants is whatever benefits everybody else.

“I think she is a really good hustler, and those are her words,” said Mary Ostrander, business development director for the American Heart Association’s “Go Red for Women” awareness campaign, whose latest benefit raised $400,000 (nearly double last year’s total) under the co-chairmanship of Horowitz and Lori DeMaria. “She is very tenacious, and she won’t let anyone say, ‘No.’ Once she feels passionate about something, she won’t let it go.”

Board of directors for the UCSD Cardiovascular Center and the La Jolla Community Center. Co-founder of the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute’s Fishman Fund. Charter 100 Woman of the Year. ﻿Planner of many galas. For the last decade or so, Horowitz has been one of San Diego’s busiest philanthropists. Her giving touch and knack for throwing a memorable fundraiser benefits more health, science and child-welfare causes than she can name, but the motivation comes from one bottomless source.

“The deep truth of why I do this is that all my life, I have been fighting a battle against other people’s pain,” Horowitz said during an interview at the Old Town offices of Just In Time for Foster Youth, where she was wrapping up work on the group’s April 6 gala. (Tickets for the group’s Fiat raffle are still on sale at jitfosteryouth.org/raffle.)

“As far back as I can remember, I have felt so bad for people who were hurting, and that’s where all of this comes from. Certain things have called to me and made me think, ‘This is bad. I have to do something about it.’ And that’s how I got in this mess.”

A longtime owner and operator (with husband Sam) of convalescent hospitals and assisted-living facilities, Horowitz got into what she fondly calls this giving-back “mess” after retiring more than a decade ago. She had started hitting the gala circuit, and then she began making gala-appropriate jewelry using the stones and keepsakes she and Sam had picked up on their many trips abroad.

“What happens is, I fall in love with these materials, and then I try to figure out a way to honor the materials with what I make,” said Horowitz, who was wearing a necklace featuring a prayer box she found in China. “Then I try to endow the person who is wearing it with a little something special.”

Her hobby took off in an extra-special direction when local charity maven Mary Bradley saw one of Horowitz’s opulent necklaces on a Nordstrom saleswoman and ended up buying 12 pieces. When a slightly abashed Horowitz wondered what she should do with the windfall, Bradley suggested she help start a speakers’ series at the Sanford-Burnham Medical Institute.

A few years later, Horowitz and Bradley established the Fishman Fund, which gives yearly awards of $5,000 each to five postdoctoral researchers. The fund is a tribute to the late Dr. William Fishman and his wife, Lillian, who founded the Institute. It it also a reflection of what makes Reena Horowitz run.

“One of my passions is biomedical science, because you can help so many people,” said Horowitz, a Milwaukee, Wis., transplant who attended Hoover High School and San Diego State. “My other big passion is kids. They are the hope of our future, and they are the most vulnerable group in society. There is a special place in my heart for them.”

Horowitz thinks she probably got the helping gene comes from her mother, a teacher who established what Horowitz says was the first community center in Louisville, Ky. She also credits her Jewish faith and its devotion to charity; the seniors from her convalescent homes, who taught her to always go for what she wanted in life; and the husband and two grown children who have supported her along the way.

But mostly, Horowitz chalks up her good works to good fortune. The pleasure is all hers, but the benefits are all ours.

“I get so much joy and pleasure out of all this,” she said. “You really are kind of lucky when you do something out of your own nature and it is so satisfying at the same time.”